Scott Buchholz (Wright, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Skills and Training) Share this | Hansard source

In 2010, the electorate of Wright was first formed as a byproduct of a redistribution. I am the inaugural member for the seat of Wright, and it is a privilege. I feel immensely proud to be able to represent the good people of Wright. This is the fifth time I have been returned to this amazing building to be their voice, to carry their concerns, to come and lobby for the infrastructure that's required and to speak with our ministers and departments down here about the reduction of red tape for businesses so that mums and dads and families can end up with more money in their pockets and so that businesses can become more profitable.

This year, it is more likely that we will have another redistribution. The average electorate size is around 100,000 to 120,000. I am at over 140,000 people, and my next-door neighbour of Blair is very similar. I see the member for Forde in the room. Are you over as well?

135,000, for the benefit of Hansard.

So it is very likely that our boundaries will not look the same in a future redistribution, but we will work actively with the Australian Electoral Commission to secure what hopefully is the best for our local communities.

Our regions are growing. In terms of numbers, they are expanding, and with that come growing pains. The communities of Yarrabilba, Plainland and other communities right across my electorate are experiencing urban sprawl, as we're located just on the outskirts of Brisbane and the Gold Coast. As the entry points into the housing market are becoming more and more difficult, people are choosing to come and live in the regions and commute a little further because it makes sense from a price point perspective. There's another cohort as well. Those who have lived in the cities all their lives are taking the opportunity to downsize, cash out of high-value properties, come and buy a property, which is often superior with regard to its age, in my region and seek to retire. It is an absolutely picturesque region, from the Gold Coast hinterland and Tambourine Mountain to the Scenic Rim, which Lonely Planet says is one of the top 10 destinations in the world to visit.

We have some of the most exquisite restaurants. We have an eat local campaign that goes for an entire month, where restaurants in Brisbane and the Gold Coast that buy local produce from our community—pork, cheese or honey—bring their clients out and set up pop-up restaurants on the farm where the honey, cheese or pork is grown. There are long table lunches in the spring. They converse with the locals and the community. They bring out their chefs and their waitstaff, and they sell tickets. It's such a popular event. You have to be very quick to get into the pop-ups that you want; otherwise they disappear very quickly.

Agriculture is still the largest contributor to GDP in my electorate. This year, over in Withcott, a company that is probably not known to many people in Australia, Southern Cross Windmills, is celebrating its 150 years of manufacturing here in Australia, in my electorate. It's worth noting, given the current debate in the other house, that every single one of my original farms, the original blocks, would at some stage have had a windmill on them. When the windmills broke down, we went to solar pumps. That makes my growers and farmers the early adopters of renewable energy. They didn't do it because they were looking to save the planet; they did it because it was the most efficient and cheapest way to pump water for stock and domestic usage. We're very proud to have Southern Cross Windmills celebrating their 150th anniversary in our electorate.

To be returned to this place is a great privilege, and it's not something that you can do on your own. I am very humbled by the 400-plus volunteers that helped me get re-elected. I'm also very blessed that nearly all 400 of them will give their advice freely to you with their recommendations on what's best for the great region of Wright. Encompassed in my electorate, which is just under 8,000 square kilometres, are a number of state seats, and I want to acknowledge the state members who worked so hard alongside our campaign: Jon Krause, who was the deputy speaker in the Queensland parliament; Jim McDonald, who heads up most of the committees in Brisbane on infrastructure, policing and state development; Ros Bates, who is the Minister for Finance, Trade, Employment and Training; and Linus Power, from Logan, who predominately sits within the electorate of Wright as well.

Encompassed in that geographical footprint are four shires. I have the Lockyer Valley shire, who boast to have the seventh most fertile valley in the world. When you come to Lockyer Valley, you can smell the soil and you can drive along and see the tapestry of different vegetable varieties when we're in full production of cauliflower, broccolini, carrot and lucerne. It is such an evocative view, and, because of the odour, you can nearly pick the vegetable as you drive past at 100 kilometres per hour. Often I just pull over and get out of my car to go and feel the quality of the soil and its moisture content. It really connects you to the amazing work that our local farmers and growers do to feed our country.

Unfortunately, in the Lockyer Valley at the moment, there are a lot of farmers that are choosing to back out of the high-value crops and grow lucerne because it's just too hard to do business with our large retailers. The cost of production is spiralling. It's becoming increasingly difficult to procure labour for family farms, and often mums and dads are encouraging the next generation to pursue a career that's not farming. The way we entice the next generation back to farming is to make it profitable, and then they'll return overnight. Tanya Milligan, who is the Lockyer valley local mayor, does an amazing job. She has served in the council for over 20 years, and she is a well-known identity. There's nothing in that community that she is not across, with her entire council.

Tom Sharp is the newly elected member for the shire of Beaudesert or Scenic Rim. It's aptly named because it is truly a scenic rim, as the rim part of the descriptor is the Great Dividing Range. The cracks around the Lamington National Park and Tamborine Mountain are truly spectacular events. We host a number of gliders who come down and take advantage of the thermal springs that are present because of the topography of the region. Tom is a tireless workhorse for the region. He's getting his feet under the desk and getting some real wins on the ground.

Over on the Gold Coast, Tom Tate is a well-known political identity on the landscape down there and an enormously big thinker when it comes to infrastructure. In the city of Logan, Jon Raven is filled with energy, and you walk away from every engagement with Jon enthused and energised. His commitment to the city of Logan is absolutely commendable.

I want to acknowledge in my area the amazing work that our sporting organisations do and just how important it is for our children to be involved in sports. It's too easy for a child to be armed with wi-fi and a phone or a PlayStation. I just think a child who competes in a team sport on a regular basis and attends training develops qualities and skills that advance their communication techniques, their confidence and their social skills to interact. So, to all of our sporting organisations, who potentially run on volunteer hours, I thank you for the work that you do.

I've got 86 different schools across my electorate, between high schools, private schools and state schools. Our teachers do an amazing job. Some schools can have up to five deputy principals, like Beaudesert State High School, which is an extremely large school, and I've got other small schools that might have 18 kids. When I make consideration for the Speaker of the House when he travels to schools to spread the good word, it is a difficult deliberation to try and work out which are the best schools for him to visit because I'm so blessed with the skill sets and the development of these kids.

We have an enormous number of service groups. I know they have these in the city as well, but our service groups and our volunteer base—you can tell the quality of your community by the quality of your community service persons and your volunteers, from your rural fire brigades to the people who'll go up and help clean the pool even though it's the council's. There are our churches. My mum, who is 83 this year, is part of mahjong. She's part of the church group, she's part of a walking group and a couple of day of the week she goes and does craft, and then somebody else roped her into going and doing something for another organisation that does women's packs for the Pacific islands and sends them off. I said, 'Mum, you're never home,' and she said, 'Well, I'm too busy.' I just love my mum. Occasionally, she might iron a few shirts for me. I love you very much, Mum!

I thank all of our business owners that put their houses up as collateral to go and borrow capital to employ the kids leaving school in our community. I thank them for what they do—for the risks that they take, can I say. All strength to your arms. Coming from a small-business background myself, I know the challenges but I also know the rewards the small-business sector can bring.

I want to acknowledge and say thank you to our agricultural shows. From Mudgeeraba to the smallest show we have, the Ma Ma Creek Exhibition, every one of the 10 that I have in my electorate has a different appeal. It's like trying to pick your favourite child. Every agricultural show has its strengths. Unfortunately, I'm not able to attend all of them every year, just by the nature of scheduling and the parliamentary commitments.

It's not my intention to bore the House with the amount of infrastructure that I have delivered in the last term, because I think that is our job. It is our job, as federal members, to do that. What I want to do with the time that's left is share my vision for the electorate. There is still work to be done—on the Mount Lindesay Highway, for example. As I said in my opening comment, my communities are growing, and with that come growing pains. People are choosing to come out, which means I've got more commuters on the road. They're potentially still working in Brisbane and choosing to live in the electorate of Wright. So, I'm committed to partnering with the state government and making sure that we're making the right funding decisions today and into the future to deal with those infrastructure problems—to address those pinch points which can make what should be a pleasant drive to work often frustrating, because of the time delays. There are a couple of spots on the Warrego Highway between Brisbane and Toowoomba that, when we have considerable rain in the Lockyer Valley, are no stranger to substantial flooding. There are a couple of places where the highway is blocked, and we need to upgrade one of the intersections so that Brisbane and our far west still have connectivity to markets and to the greater Brisbane area. We will be pursuing and doing early costings on what that project looks like with our state colleagues.

In Tamborine Mountain, as I mentioned before, there's a sporting association that has an incredible vision for their community, and sport is at the heart of it. They want to get a business plan done, so we'll work with them to try and find some money to assist them.

We will continue to pursue the roll out of telecommunication towers to try and fix the inefficiencies. We have come a long way. People will buy blocks for many thousands of dollars cheaper, and they'll think they've got a good deal. Then they'll come and say to me, 'The block doesn't have any power.' Well, that's why you bought it cheap, my friend. It may not have power and it may not have mobile phone reception. We will continue to negotiate with our telecommunications operators and telcos to address those inefficiencies as we grow as a community.

In Beaudesert, there's a motivated group within our community, particularly through the Beaudesert Chamber of Commerce, who are adamant that we work towards building our own police citizens youth club so that it can work with our children to prevent crime.

We'll continue to work on Mount Lindesay. There's an intersection near the Amberley Interchange for which we had $75 million on the table some years ago. Unfortunately, we were looking for a funding partner in the then Queensland Labor government, and they wouldn't have a bar of it, so our community missed out on the money that we had on the table, and that money was repurposed. So we will continue to try to find a solution for the great people who use that intersection—most likely the people who work onsite at Amberley.

Of course, there is the Bromelton precinct just outside Beaudesert. They're greenfield sites, and we have an enormous capacity. I will make a prediction today, without putting a timeframe on it, that there will be up to 10,000 permanent jobs in that precinct in the long term on hard-to-place industries. Our council is motivated to facilitate it. Our community is ready to harness it. We have the housing growth, the schools and the businesses motivated to see that precinct expand.

I'm sure there are those who will be offended by the fact that I have omitted them from my speech. That has only happened as a result of the restrictions on time, because, hopefully, all and sundry can get a sense of how passionate I am and how proud I am to be the federal member for Wright. The position that I hold in this place as the shadow minister for skills and training is a great privilege, and I cannot do that unless I am re-elected at each election by our wonderful people.

In closing in the last couple of seconds, I will say that our families pay an enormous sacrifice for the time that we spend away, both in the community and down here. I just want to thank my family and, on the public record, let them know that I am immensely proud of all them and I love them dearly. Thank you for the time.

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